


Falling

by Lysippe



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 05:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16867390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lysippe/pseuds/Lysippe
Summary: The first time Johanna took a bath after getting back from the Capitol was mostly by accident. She hadn’t intended to end up sitting fully clothed and soaked to the bone outside the bathtub of her tiny compartment in District 13, trying to make herself as small as possible. She hadn’t intended to go anywhere near the water, much less touch it. She certainly hadn’t intended to fall in the goddamn tub.





	Falling

**Author's Note:**

> Don't mind me, I'm just going through and uploading all my Hunger Games fanfiction from Tumblr while everyone freaks out about the oncoming apocalypse.

The first time Johanna took a bath after getting back from the Capitol was mostly by accident. She hadn’t intended to end up sitting fully clothed and soaked to the bone outside the bathtub of her tiny compartment in District 13, trying to make herself as small as possible. She hadn’t intended to go anywhere near the water, much less touch it. She certainly hadn’t intended to fall in the goddamn tub.

She was surprised she had even gotten close enough to fall, really. When she had entered the bathroom, the humidity felt like it was sapping the air from her lungs and the urge to bolt was immediate and overwhelming. But instead, she forced herself to take the two steps from the door to the tub, her movements stilted and forced, and sat down on the floor, back facing the tub.

“What do you want?” Katniss, naked and half-submerged in water, had curled her body into a ball when Johanna entered, in a vainly predictable effort to preserve some sense of modesty. When she had received no response, Katniss sighed and spared a glance at the back of Johanna’s head. “If you don’t have anything to say, then go away. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I came in here to say I’m sorry, okay?” Johanna muttered, still not turning around. She stared at her feet stretched out in front of her and tried to forget how uncomfortable every single thing about this made her feel.

“For what? Telling me you never wanted to live with me in the first place, or calling me a self-centered brat?”

Johanna winced slightly at the acid in Katniss’ tone. “I don’t know, both, I guess.”

“You guess?” Katniss was clearly not impressed with her attempted apology.

Pushing herself upward and sitting down as close to the edge of the bathtub as she could, Johanna took a deep, steadying breath. “I’m sorry. For everything. I know you did me a favor by getting me out of that stupid hospital and I’ve been a shitty roommate, so I’m just sorry in general, alright?”

“Alright.”

“Alright what?”

“Alright your apology is accepted,” Katniss said, offering a small smile as she placed one wet hand on Johanna’s knee.

That was when it had happened. The unanticipated contact of water to her skin startled Johanna, who immediately jerked backwards, losing her balance entirely and collapsing into the tub, just barely managing to avoid hitting her head on the way down.

Johanna’s reaction was immediate, her scream involuntary, resonating from deep within her chest as she scrambled and clawed her way out of the water. She ended up with her back pressed against the side of the tub, once more facing away from Katniss as she tried to still the trembling in her limbs.

“What the hell, Johanna?” Katniss’ voice seemed far away as Johanna focused on steadying her breaths, on not moving, not getting pulled back into her mind.

“Johanna,  _talk to me_.” Katniss’ voice was stern, if slightly panicky.

Johanna opened her mouth to respond, but no sound came out. 

“Johanna.  _Johanna_. Please. I need you to come back to me now.” The voice was calmer now, gentle but insistent.

“I’ll be fine,” Johanna managed to get out with one one tremulous exhalation of breath.

“Good. Can you look at me?”

“No.”

“Okay then. Can you tell me what happened?”

“The water…” Johanna started. “It was the water.”

“What about the water? It felt okay to me.” Katniss sounded genuinely confused, and Johanna felt a familiar twinge of irritation. She was clearly going to have to explain everything.

“It was… that’s what… in the Capitol. That’s what they did. They soaked me in water and then they shocked me.”

“Oh.” The word was soft and breathy and much closer than Johanna thought it should be. She turned her head slightly and was greeted by sad gray eyes and an expression she didn’t quite understand.

“Does anyone else know?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t told anyone, but I’m sure it’s gotten out to a few people, since they didn’t try to force me to take a bath in the hospital,” Johanna said as nonchalantly as she could. She loathed the idea of anyone knowing how badly she had been hurt, but there wasn’t much she could do about it now.

“It must have taken a lot for you to come here, then,” Katniss said.

“I dunno, I guess.”

“No, really.” Katniss’ hand, carefully dried on a nearby towel, gripped Johanna’s shoulder lightly. “You could have waited for me to come out to apologize, but you didn’t, and after all this… just, thank you.”

“Forget about it.”

“I won’t, though,” Katniss said seriously. 

“I wish you would.”

“Well, too bad.” Katniss ran a hand through the remnants of Johanna’s hair. “God, you need to wash this.”

“No, I don’t,” Johanna said defensively. She could barely manage to get herself through washing herself with a wet rag. There was no way she was going to willingly submit herself to submerging her head in water just for the sake of having clean hair.

“You really do. I’ll wash it for you, if that makes it any better,” Katniss offered. “You won’t even have to get into the bath, I promise.”

“I like my hair the way it is, thanks,” Johanna said shortly.

“Johanna,” Katniss sighed, draping herself over the bathtub and catching Johanna’s gaze. “You can’t not bathe for the rest of your life. Someday you’re going to have to face this. It might as well be now.”

“I know,” Johanna said. “But that doesn’t make it any better.”

“I know.” Katniss offered up a small smile. “But I’ll be gentle, I promise. You won’t even know it’s happening.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

“Okay, maybe not. But… just trust me?” 

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” Johanna scowled.

“Nope. And if you really need me to stop, I promise I will.”

“Find. Just… be quick about it, okay?” Johanna relented, trying to keep her cool.

“Of course. Just lean your head back and it’ll be over before you know it,” Katniss spoke with the tone of a mother trying to coax a recalcitrant child into doing her bidding.

Johanna did as she was told, tilting her head back and trying to relax her shoulders, her eyes locking with Katniss’.

“Close your eyes!” Katniss commanded indignantly.

A sly grin crossed Johanna’s features, but she closed her eyes. “You’re really still hung up on modesty? You’ve seen me naked a hundred times.”

“Only because you don’t seem to believe in clothes,” Katniss countered, scooping the first handful of water and releasing it into Johanna’s hair. The sensation made Johanna shudder, but she forced herself to stay still.

“Still, doesn’t that put us on an uneven footing? I mean, I don’t see what you’re so uptight about. You look a hell of a lot better naked than I do right now.

Taking in Johanna’s too-thin frame, bones protruding where once there was muscle, her unevenly spiky hair and the pockmarked scars from her time in the Capitol, Katniss at once felt a visceral hatred of the people who had managed to hurt the strongest woman she knew so badly. “I think you look just fine,” she said defiantly.

“I look like hell, but thanks anyway.” Katniss was masaging what Johanna assumed was shampoo into her hair. It would almost have felt nice if she hadn’t wanted to bolt from the room so badly.

“I’m serious,” Katniss persisted. “You always look great, even when you look like hell.” The argument seemed to be grounding Johanna just enough that she could sit through having her hair washed, so Katniss was willing to persist long past the point of futility.

“Nice to know you find emaciation attractive,” Johanna joked bitterly.

“I don’t.” 

“So you just find me attractive?” It was meant as a joke, another means of getting a rise out of her overly-uptight roommate and deflecting her attention from Johanna’s discomfort. So she was not expecting the response she got.

“Kinda, yeah,” Katniss said casually, her hands stalling in Johanna’s hair.

“Then you must be blind, brainless.” It wasn’t quite an appropriate reaction, but Johanna Mason was nothing if not inappropriate, and the hint of levity in her words made Katniss smile.

“You’re such an ass,” she declared lightly, patting Johanna on the head. “All done.”

Johanna heard Katniss pull the drain from the tub, allowing the water to flow away and Johanna to breathe a little more freely. 

Katniss climbed out of the bathtub, winding a towel tightly around her body as Johanna rolled her eyes. Opening the door to their room, Katniss leaned down and extended a hand, helping Johanna off the ground.

“So,” Johanna said, stripping off her clothes as she walked back into their room. Her confidence returned quickly as she changed into dry clothes and dried her hair vigorously with her shirt. “You find me attractive, huh?”

“Did I say that?” Katniss hedged.

“You definitely did. I was there, I heard it.”

“I just wanted… I mean… just, you know, know that there’s someone who always thinks you’re beautiful, and the Capitol can’t take that away.” Katniss, now flushed and mumbling, turned away. “Just forget about it.”

Closing the gap between them and embracing Katniss from behind, Johanna rested her chin on Katniss’ shoulder, murmuring, “What if I don’t  _want_  to forget about it?”

“I don’t know,” Katniss said cautiously. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying maybe I don’t find you wholly unattractive yourself, brainless.”

“Oh, really, now?” Katniss said lightly, hoping Johanna couldn’t feel her heart pounding.

“Yeah, really. So what are you going to do about it?” Johanna teased. She could tell that Katniss was nervous, and while intellectually she knew that it wasn’t fair to torment her like this, it felt good to tilt the scales of power slightly back in her favor.

Katniss turned around so she was facing Johanna and returned the embrace. It was at that moment, with Johanna’s head snuggled into her chest, that she realized she was still wearing nothing but a towel. “Well,” she drawled, determined to save face, “I was thinking of taking this towel off…” Johanna’s eyebrows rose approvingly. “and putting some pajamas on,” Katniss finished, earning a low, throaty groan from Johanna, the vibrations of which she felt throughout her body.

“You’re a fucking tease, brainless.”

“What? You don’t want to go to bed?” Katniss asked innocently, pulling away to retrieve her pajamas from her drawer.

“Depends what you plan to do in bed,” Johanna remarked glibly.

“Well,  _I_ will be sleeping, hopefully,” Katniss said, removing her towel in one swift movement and throwing it over Johanna’s head as she scrambled to get dressed as quickly as possible.

Johanna got the towel off just in time to see Katniss pulling a shirt over her head. “And I will be…?”

“Joining me,” Katniss finished, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Really, you call  _me_ brainless.”

“I  _guess_  that’s acceptable,” Johanna said with an exaggerated sigh.

“Good.” Katniss flopped back onto her bed, grabbing Johanna’s hand and pulling her down with her. Burying her face in Johanna’s hair as she held her close, Katniss breathed in deeply. “Johanna?”

Johanna let out a small, contented noise that was so utterly un-Johanna that Katniss almost laughed.

“You smell good.”

**Author's Note:**

> Join me on Tumblr @thebestdressedrebelinhistory


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